Session 3: The Book as Primary Form

Lauren Simkin Berke
Memory + Imagination

Monday, March 15, 2021, 9 am EST
Webinar Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84592197420
Webinar ID: 845 9219 7420

In this lecture, Lauren Simkin Berke will discuss their personal practice of making books and zines, as well as placing that work within the context of contemporary sequential art in book form that focuses on both real and imagined memories. Memories are the stories we hold from personal experience that create the myth of ourselves, our families, and our communities; this will be a look at how artists bridge and explore the lines between experiential, emotional, and generational memory.

Suggested Reading:
John Burger, "Once in a Story," And Other Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos (New York, Vintage International, 1991): 8-21. 
Armand Mevis, "Every Book Starts with an Idea: Notes for Designers," The Form of the Book Book (Occasional Papers, 2015): 85-91.
Esther K. Smith, "Introduction" and "Chapter One: Instant Books," How to Make Books (Potter Craft, 2007)

Lauren Simkin Berke is a Brooklyn-based American artist and illustrator, publishing art books and zines under the name Captain Sears Press, and creating illustrations for clients such as The New York Times, Paris Review Editions, Simon & Schuster, and Rémy Martin. Berke's illustrations are figurative, narrative, and conceptual, intended to evoke the experiential memory of the reader. Berke teaches in the MFA in Illustration program at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and their first picture book came out this past October, with Schwartz & Wade Books.